Mastering Skills Insights: A Comprehensive Guide for Newbies

Are you new to using skills insights and wondering where to start?

Here's your guide to navigating this vital tool for workforce optimization and growth.

How to Use Skills Insights

Skills insights can be incredibly versatile and beneficial for various aspects of talent management. Here are some examples:

• Talent Allocation: Assign people to workflows efficiently to reduce costly errors and ensure optimal outcomes.
• Internal Career Mobility and Capability Tracking: Keep track of employee capabilities to facilitate career progression and internal movement.
• Targeted Training and Coaching Budgets: Develop and get approval for a budget focused on addressing specific skill gaps.
• Training Allocation and Tracking: Ensure training efforts are aligned with identified skills gaps.
• Talent Development: Foster continuous growth and development within your team.
• Talent Retention: Keep your top talent by providing growth opportunities and addressing skills gaps.
• Talent Acquisition: Hire the right people with the right skills.
• Equity and Pay: Ensure fair compensation based on skills and capabilities.
• Assembling Project Teams: Create effective teams for digital transformation and other projects.

Generating Skills Data

Wondering where to start with generating skills data? Here are some approaches:

• Ask the Leader Managing Target Roles: They have the best insight into required skills, making the process more democratic. (e.g., IT for tech roles, HR for capability roles, Project Managers for project roles)
• Purchase a List of Skills: This is not preferred as these lists often lack quality and specificity.
• Use AI to Extract Skills from a CV: Not recommended due to concerns over quality, relevance, and regulatory issues such as the AI EU Act.
• Use ChatGPT: An excellent, low-cost, and efficient method if you know the right prompts.
• Pay for Third-Party Services: While accurate, this can be costly and create dependency on external providers.

Types of Skills Insights

Skills insights come in two key elements:

• Element A:Track Skills (yes or no): Identify skill gaps but don't provide detailed talent allocation insights.Assess Skills: Offers a tiered view of skills capabilities compared to target levels set by the team or organization.
• Element B:Role-Specific: hone-in on job functions at the individual levelWorkflow-Specific: flexibility and agility at the team-levelSkills from the HR Capability Matrix: provides a higher-level competency view of skills for benchmarking and other outward focusing purposes

Starting Small for Success

Keep it short and simple initially to ensure success:

• Begin with a handful of roles within 1 or 2 departments.
• Assess these skills.
• Review insights and adjust the skills framework as needed.

This approach is cost-effective, time-efficient, and allows you to perfect your data structure before scaling up.? It’s better to start small and expand than to go big and realise you got it wrong!

Common Skills Assessment Methods

Here are some ways to assess skills:

• Training Completion: Assumes skill acquisition but doesn't measure skill level.
• Knowledge and Job Title: Assumes skill possession but lacks skill level assessment.
• Observation and Rating Schemes: Evaluates the application of skills with defined rating criteria.

In Summary

Using skills insights effectively can revolutionize your approach to talent and workforce management. Whether tracking or assessing skills, these insights can enhance talent allocation, development, career mobility, acquisition, and retention.

Embrace this guide, start small, and watch your organization thrive with enhanced skills insights!